The winner of the 2011 Business Archives Council Wadsworth Prize for British Business History is Sir Geoffrey Owen for his The Rise and Fall of Great Companies: Courtaulds and the reshaping of the man-made fibres industry published by Pasold Research Fund and Oxford University Press in 2010.

The Business Archives Council awarded the Wadsworth Prize in Business History for books published in 2010 at a reception held in Unilever House.  The prize was presented to Sir Geoffrey Owen by the Chairman of the BAC, Dr Terry Gourvish.  The judges for this year’s prize were Martin Vander Weyer, journalist, Dr Michael Moss of the University of Glasgow and Dr Peter Jones, of the University of Birmingham, and last year’s winner.

The BAC Wadsworth prize is awarded annually for the best book published during the previous year in the field of British business history. Since its inauguration in 1978 it has recognised the achievements of many of the most important contributions to this field of study.

For an overview of the themes covered in The Rise and Fall of Great Companies, please read Geoffrey Owen's article "When bigger is not necessarily better" published in the Financial Times on the 23 August 2010 and the book reviews by Martin Vander Weyer on The Mail on Sunday, 24 October 2010 and by David Higgins in Business History, vol. 53/3 (2011).